Day: May 19, 2014

Now I don’t even have to see Ryan Gosling’s Lost River. The trailer makes it quite clear that this reputed “fantasy thriller” suffers from the good old “trying too hard” impulse that many first-time-filmmakers succumb to. It may be somewhat influenced by Rubber‘s Quentin Dupieux, but it’s probably going to suck eggs. I’m obliged to see it, of course (Tuesday afternoon, 2 pm, Salle Debussy) but I have a pretty good idea what this is going to be. We all do. Iain de Caestacker plays the sensitive-faced son of Christina Hendricks. The “look at my muscles!” guy is Matt Smith. Also featuring Eva Mendes, Saoirse Ronan, Ben Mendelsohn and Barbara Steele.

Earlier this evening I stood uncomfortably rock-still for a good 30 minutes outside the Salle Bunuel for a 7:30 pm screening of Pablo Fendrik‘s El Ardor, which, by the way, is slow and uninteresting. We had to wait a good 15 or 20 minutes longer than we should have because a screening of Steve James‘ Life Itself, the excellent Roger Ebert doc, ran late. And then instead of the crowd exiting when the doc was over, James and Chaz Ebert (i.e., Roger’s widow) apparently decided to have a nice leisurely q & a inside while a couple of hundred people outside melted and suffered. The air began to lose sufficient oxygen, the body heat was oppressive, and the crowd was getting angry and unruly. “That’s Cannes,” a British journalist told me. “That’s how they do things here. Get used to it.”

Last night TheWrap‘s Steve Pond posted a piece titled “Cannes At The Halfway Point: Where’s The Excitement?” Well, I’ll tell you, Steve. Cannes excitement has definitely been sparked by two films thus far — Damian Szifon‘s Wild Tales and David Cronenberg‘s Map to the Stars. Sharon Waxman, Pond’s boss, filed almost the exact same story during last year’s Cannes festival…”nothing’s really happened yet, where’s the pizazz?,” etc.

Yesterday the N.Y. Post‘s Susan Edelman revealed a list of tacky knick-knacks being sold at the new 9/11 Museum Gift Shop. Included are (a) FDNY, NYPD and Port Authority Police T-shirts and caps, (b) earrings molded from leaves and blossoms of downtown trees, (c) cop and firefighter charms by Pandora and other jewelers; and (d) “United We Stand” blankets. Not to mention 9/11 bracelets, bowls, buttons, mugs, mousepads, magnets, key chains, flags, pins, stuffed animals, toy firetrucks, cellphone cases, tote bags, books and DVDs. “Even FDNY vests for dogs come in all sizes,” Edelman reports. Why don’t they sell photos of dead jumpers while they’re at it? What gets me is that visiting adults have to pay $24 to even get into the store. What’s the difference, I’m wondering, between this and similar items (tasteful scale models of prisoner barracks, little Nazi ashtrays, little toy Doberman Pinschers) being sold in a gift shop at the Dachau and Auschwitz museums?

Here are three mp3s from this morning’s Foxcatcher press conference, which was attended by (left to right in pic below) Mark Ruffalo, Channing Tatum, director Bennett Miller, Steve Carell, producer Megan Ellison. Here’s the entire press conference, start to finish. At one point Chaz Ebert asked Miller about having gotten exceptional performances not just from his Foxcatcher cast but particularly from the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, whom Miller directed in Capote — here’s his halting emotional response. A little later on Miller explained that you can capture a world or a situation with a telescope or a microscope, and that Foxcatcher uses the latter approach.

(l. to r.) Ruffalo, Miller, Carell, Tatum.

Speaking as a devoted admirer of Bennett Miller‘s Capote and Moneyball, it gives me no pleasure to admit that I feel a tad less enthusiastic about Foxcatcher, which screened this morning at the Cannes Film Festival. There’s no doubt that Foxcatcher is very strong and precise and clean, especially as crime dramas tend to go. And I respect the fact that it contains undercurrents that stay with you, and I certainly respect and admire what Miller has done here with his deft and subtle hand. But the obviously intelligent Foxcatcher is a relentlessly bleak trip that, accomplished as it is, isn’t especially likable or enjoyable. Okay, I “liked” it or…you know, I didn’t “dislike” it because it’s so well-made and refined, etc. But it’s basically a grim study of a dark tale about victims and affluent malevolence and corrupting wealth, and about fate surrounding the characters like tentacles and sucking them down the drain.

No savvy players, no smart detectives, no wise guys, no sex, no heroes, no winners, no zingy dialogue…its a down concerto from start to finish.

Please don’t get me wrong — this is a carefully honed, highly disciplined smart-guy melodrama. I admire the shit out of it, and I will never speak ill of it. But it’s still a downbeat thing about the pursuit of Olympic wrestling glory by a couple of weird obsessives — the late multimillionaire and convicted murderer John DuPont (Steve Carell), and real-life, grim-faced 1984 Olympic wrestling champion Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) — and Mark’s kind-hearted, steady, positive-minded older brother Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), a married ex-wrestler and coach who got caught in the middle when DuPont shot him to death in 1996. The film is about creepy currents and unstated agendas that lead to perplexing tragedy, and it all happens in gloomy rural Pennsylvania — an atmosphere that has always seemed to have a narcotic-like effect upon my system or mood or whatever. I only know that whenever I’m in rural Pennsylvania I want to escape.

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